Test Icicles

Like wiping snot on the Mona Lisa, Help She Can’t Swim are tainted. As their fission rock drops sonic science, the lumbering presence of singer/keyboard player Lisa Francais is like the smell of farts left lingering after a sulphur experiment. It’s not big or clever to victimise people, but the girl can’t sing, the girl can’t dance and while she mills about the stage like a giant amoeba searching for bacterial snacks, she single-handedly debases the visceral energy and cataclysmic momentum that the other four members effortlessly conjure. Lady, don’t look so miserable!

Eyesore aside, HSCS’s synth enhanced thrash-rock is a brimming pleasure that bubbles like concentrated hydrochloric acid over a Bunsen burner. ‘You can dance to this one!’ announces co-vocalist and guitarist Tom Denny, and he sure is right. You can also jump, scream, mosh or re-enact a Nootkasian burial ritual, such is the versatility at the heart of this positively afflictive music.

Just as we’ve scooped up our fugitive brains off the ceiling and packed them back best we can into our battered craniums, out step the band who party so hard they can turn virgin’s womb inside out with little more than a stare.

Around this point the evening transmogrifies from a rock gig to an all-our riot. Hopefully the rumours of Test Icicles’ imminent split aren’t true, as tonight they hit their stride, turning out a truly unforgettable show. They are the epitome of the new wave of Neon Fission outfits, incorporating a variety of eclectic acts ranging from Help She Can’t Swim and ¡Forward, Russia! to Lethal Bizzle and Killa Kela. What they’ve all got in common is a complete disregard for the trappings of genre, performance and order, instead splitting the elements and throwing the individual pieces about in a melee of sonic and visual chaos that’s as fundamentally vital and absurd as a ride on a speeding bullet through Tokyo’s brightly-lit, bustling Electric City District. Nothing lasts, the joy is built on unstable molecules, but in the moment it’s affirming and thrilling.

There is no set-list, the band simply weave in and out of songs as they feel, throwing in absurd covers of Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West and The Spice Girls. During ‘Boa Vs. Python’, band member Sam (there’s no point listing instruments, all three of them have a go at everything) sings the lyrics to ‘Circle Square Triangle’, during ‘Circle Square Triangle’ he sings the information on drinks promotions displayed above the Leadmill’s bar. There’s the potential for it to all go horribly wrong at any moment (as many past shows have), but the scatter-gun approach keeps everyone gripped on tenterhooks and serves to make things even more triumphant when they do pull it off.

Constant crowd-surfing and stage invasions send a current through the crowd, bringing them together as one living organism. The band play their songs too fast so initiate a ‘chillaxment’ break where they tell us stories and show us love, over a sentimental Chris De Burgh sound-bed. So surreal and unexpected whilst so sincere and exciting, the show is like a minor epiphany.

An ad-libbed hip-hop interlude headed up by Dev’s un-rehearsed rapping brings new meaning to the idea of Rap-rock, one that would leave Fred Durst shitting his nappy. Test Icicles are a volatile breed and no one knows how long it can last. They’ll either go back into the studio, write a truckload of excellent new singles (hopefully with a bit more of their hip-hop talent taken on board too) or they’ll combust, living on only in myth. For now though, Test Icicles rule.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.